FREE Download: Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"
"Leaves of Grass"by Walt Whitman
"Leaves of Grass" (1855) is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman. Among the poems in the collection are "Song of Myself", "I Sing the Body Electric", and in later editions, Whitman's elegy to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass,[1] revising it in several editions until his death.
Overview: This book is notable for its delight in and praise of the senses during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual, Leaves of Grass (particularly the first edition) exalted the body and the material world. Influenced by the Transcendentalist movement, itself an offshoot of Romanticism, Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role in it. However, Whitman does not diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise."
Overview: This book is notable for its delight in and praise of the senses during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual, Leaves of Grass (particularly the first edition) exalted the body and the material world. Influenced by the Transcendentalist movement, itself an offshoot of Romanticism, Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role in it. However, Whitman does not diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass
•••
"Is it wonderful that I should be immortal?
as every one is immortal;
I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful,
and how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful,
And pass’d from a babe in the creeping trance
of a couple of summers and winters to articulate and walk
—all this is equally wonderful.
And that my soul embraces you this hour,
and we affect each other without ever seeing each other,
and never perhaps to see each other,
is every bit as wonderful.
And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
And that I can remind you,
and you think them and know them to be true,
is just as wonderful.
And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth,
is equally wonderful,
And that they balance themselves
with the sun and stars is equally wonderful."
- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"
•••
FREE download of "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whiman, in PDF format, is here:
http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/whitman/Leaves-of-Grass6x9.pdf
•••
"Is it wonderful that I should be immortal?
as every one is immortal;
I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful,
and how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful,
And pass’d from a babe in the creeping trance
of a couple of summers and winters to articulate and walk
—all this is equally wonderful.
And that my soul embraces you this hour,
and we affect each other without ever seeing each other,
and never perhaps to see each other,
is every bit as wonderful.
And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
And that I can remind you,
and you think them and know them to be true,
is just as wonderful.
And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth,
is equally wonderful,
And that they balance themselves
with the sun and stars is equally wonderful."
- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"
•••
FREE download of "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whiman, in PDF format, is here:
http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/whitman/Leaves-of-Grass6x9.pdf
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